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“SoonR”:http://www.soonr.com is dedicated to providing mobile users with a service that lets them access critical information and applications on their PC from wherever they are in the world, across any network and on any handset..Martin originally was involved with one of the early PC software companies, Borland International. This is where, among other things, Martin came up with the idea that there should be data exchange between computers and devices. In 1990 Martin co-invented (with Steven Boye, SoonR CTO) the patent for Appointment sync between a PC and a device. Later, Martin focused on the Web, and was the founding VP of Engineering at NetObjects, a company focused on Web authoring and publishing.

With there being so many communication mediums and information constantly coming at us, how does SoonR solve the problem of keeping it all organized?

At SoonR, we see that users continue to have a lot of information on their PCs, and the PC is a great medium for organizing. These days users have so much information that they use desktop search products so they can better find their own information. At the same time, we are all becoming more mobile, use mobile devices more and communicate with many people constantly. With SoonR, we believe in a model where the information basically resides back on the PCs and as we move around, we continue to have full access to this big cloud of information and applications that is spread around all these computers. However, it’s also important to realize the mobile world is different than the PC world; your 2MB PowerPoint slide show would take forever to get on the phone, so its critical that information can transform well to a new medium � so your slides may rendered one slide a a time as a JPG on the phone to ensure a reasonable user experience.

Right now the basic service offered is free. With the upcoming release of your premium service, what will be included and what will be the cost?

We have not yet decided exactly on this. Currently, we are very excited about the fact that we have built a global following with users in over 200 countries and we have now seen SoonR being used successfully on over 600 different mobile phones. We have a user-base that is very active and provides us with a lot of valuable feedback; we believe that is in itself extremely valuable. It was a founding principle for us that we could evolve SoonR through real use.
Where do you see SoonR one year from now?

You will see that we will have continued to aggressively innovate on this platform; you will see us deliver more functionality that will extend the power of the PC to the mobile hand-set. You will also see us working with many partners around the world that will integrate SoonR functionality into their offerings, like we earlier this week announced a joint offering with WebEx�s PCNow product.

Bonus: You have had previous experience in developing products that assist users in reaching new levels of productivity, was SoonR a natural progression of that?

Absolutely, my career launched as the PC was born so I lived these early years of the PC. Later I saw the web coming and spent a decade or so in that world. All along, I had this passion for mobile devices; as I would visit my home-country of Denmark I saw how people became more and more sophisticated in their use of mobile devices so it became a natural for me to pick mobile as the next project. Being in it, it’s clear the mobile space has an even bigger potential than the PC or Web had � its off the hook!

Copyright © 2007 by Will Kern